Firefighters respond to a fire at a Santa Ana warehouse. The OCFA board of 25 members oversees the department BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

As I walk into an Orange County Fire Authority Board meeting, a board member wonders – and I am not making this up – if the subject at hand should be discussed because the Register too often learns of matters better kept confidential.

What's weird is that this is a public meeting. Perhaps even weirder is that it appears the speaker isn't playing to the newly arrived guest. He's actually serious. Talk about dumb luck.

But it's unclear who's dumb and who's lucky. Sure, it's an irresistible anecdote. But trying to work through the complex bureaucracy that engulfs one of our county's largest agencies seems anything but smart.

So why bother? The OCFA faces contract negotiations in the months to come as well as mounting retirement burdens that in the not-too-distant future could grow worse.

In short, I am concerned about the future of fire service.

• • •

The OCFA was born in the fires of the county's bankruptcy in the early to mid-1990s. The idea was citizen oversight. But is the structure collapsing under its own weight? Consider the OCFA's labyrinthine board of directors.

Board members set policy, monitor, advise and help guide this agency, which spends more than a quarter-billion dollars a year. Each member also is either a sitting city council member or county supervisor and recommends to fellow elected officials how to vote on often arcane issues and practices, on whether to approve tens of millions of dollars.

And you thought your council representative had to sit only through local meetings?

With little pay, a job that's supposed to be part time – except for the two county supervisors – and stacks of material to wade through, overseeing a complex agency such as the OCFA is enormously difficult.

Understand, firefighters do far more than turn on a hydrant and point a hose at a fire.

The OCFA serves 1.8 million people with 71 stations and delivers fire, emergency medical and rescue services. It receives and dispatches emergency calls, provides public education programs, administers a reserve program and sponsors Explorer posts. It adopts and enforces ordinances and codes, works with architects, developers and engineers and conducts building inspections. It investigates the cause of fires and maintains corridors between wildlands and development.

The list goes on.

Now, consider the long row of board chairs that I walk by before taking a seat in the peanut gallery. Representing the county as well as the OCFA's partner cities, the board is made up of 25 elected officials.

That's right, there are more than two dozen board members, one for each of the 23 cities the OCFA serves as well as two county supervisors representing unincorporated areas.

Jesus had only a dozen apostles. And even he struggled.

• • •

Board members have different interests. That can be both good and bad.

According to experts such as the IRS, a small board can more easily navigate complexities, tackle problems, adapt to change. A large board, however, may be better equipped to represent broad interests.

But can the interests of 25 members be overly broad?

During a conversation with county Supervisor Todd Spitzer about a proposed law to charge irresponsible knuckleheads for wilderness rescues, I asked about the OCFA's decision to charge the couple lost last spring in Trabuco Canyon.

The fire authority's bill? $55,000.

Spitzer pointed out that methamphetamine was reportedly found in one of the hiker's vehicles and that there was negligence. His are good points and his proposal for a bill to charge negligent hikers makes sense. But is the effort to go after the teenage hikers practical?

After talking with one of the hikers through Facebook, it appears that trying to get paid for the incident is a quixotic quest. They have little money, and it's likely the OCFA will spend more tax dollars trying to get the funds than it realistically can collect.

Board member Rick Barnett is a lawyer and a Villa Park councilman. He also is on a mission to find out if we can hire quality firefighters at less cost. He echoes the grand jury in telling the board that the OCFA should pay for a formal survey to find out how much we should pay new firefighters.

During one of the board's recent regular monthly meetings, Barnett spoke passionately for such a survey. His comments were welcomed – and then formally accepted without a decision on paying for such a survey.

Like Spitzer's call for search and rescue compensation, it appears Barnett's call for a survey disappeared into the ether.

• •

Steven Weinberg is the OCFA board chair and mayor of Dana Point. He also is a retired businessman and served as vice president of sales for Kingston Technology, where over seven years he was responsible for sales totaling $1.2 billion.

We discussed the makeup of the board a few days ago and without hesitation, Weinberg acknowledged: “It's an unwieldy board. After 10 or 12 people in the corporate world, boards start to get unwieldy.”

Compounding board difficulties, Weinberg explained, is a lack of member continuity. “Last January,” the seven-year board member said, “we had a perfect storm with 13 new board members. There's a real learning curve.”

Still, there is the positive. While Weinberg admits the OCFA has been affected by budget cuts with a “back office” hiring freeze at headquarters, he's quick to note that the challenges don't impact fire service.

“I'm proud of this organization,” the chair said. “We still get accolades from our peers throughout the U.S.”

• • •

If the devil's in the details, the board's problems go beyond its elephantine size. Problems with a relatively new electronic voting machine for board members are more than symbolic in an agency in which problem-free communication is critical.

During the Sept. 26 meeting, voting software often failed to register a member's vote. Other times, it just went blank. Eventually, one board member was forced to use an absent member's sign-on and vote under the absentee's name.

Understandably, Weinberg struggled to juggle his points, procedural issues, rules of order and digital voting. There also were problems with board members' microphones.

Perhaps the OCFA should create a committee to explore ways to streamline its board. If that sound like sarcasm, it's not.

It's time we create a structure that matches the dedication of the men and women in uniform who help keep our county safe.

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